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Hidden in the Blind Shores (CCW)
These sundry coastal lands are named for their relative inaccessibility and dangerous waters. Though no one group of Strangers dominates this region, plenty of powerful, sentient creatures inhabit the mountains, waters, and wastelands of Arcuria, Rutalia, and the North Vadraedic. Icata: the Inkfish The northern seas have long been home to some fanciful tales which, after a series of recent expeditions, have now been confirmed. A civilization of carnivorous whales thrive in the waters around and beneath an icy landmass called Icata. These creatures are highly intelligent and perhaps telepathic, or at least they seem to be based on the way they anticipate human actions and understand all of human speech. In general, it seems the Inkfish, or Orcas, have a much better grasp on humanity than humanity does on them, which is unsettling to say the least. A few of the bravest researchers have ventured onto Icata itself or a few unlucky ones have been gently plucked off boats by the Inkfish and carried into the inner recesses of their realm. All explorers, willing or not, have returned describing incoherent, nearly spiritual experiences filled with light and color, incommunicable insights, and knowledge of events far and wide across time and space. All that on top of the terror of near-death, of caves of foul, blood tinted water up to their necks, of being carelessly tossed back and forth like a plaything, of being caught in the midst of some violent Inkfish feud or harrowing ritual. The explorers always come back unscathed—at physically. Sunken Isle: the Mere Long, long ago, the Mer-folk dominated the Vadraedic, making the ocean treacherous and sea travel all but impossible. Legend has it that, in reprisal to a king’s threats, the Mere launched an attack that destroyed every human vessel down to their fishing dinghies. But humankind rebuilt its ships and fashioned new weapons. They dumped poison in the waters and harpooned the Mere’s colossal, monstrous allies. And once the Mere exhausted their summons from the deep, they called on Ama-Nali, the goddess of the seas herself, but her help came too late. The destruction of the Mere, it is said, paved the way for humanity’s control of the Vadraedic, and their clashes with primordial titans, and the ocean goddess foreshadowed their distant Wars against the Gods. To humans, the Mere are a bygone conquest, a brutal but glorious piece of their history. Yet the Mere are not extinct. A remnant remains. They keep to themselves, to a particularly perilous zone of the Forgotten Sea, the Sunken Isle. They understandably despise humans and do not hesitate to sink any ship that enters their territory. They do not negotiate. They do not give warning. They do not show mercy. Who the Mere really are—their side of the story—is left to myths and imagination. With one major exception: the Canticans, fellow worshipers of Ama-Nali and self-styled protectors of the Mere. If they know more about their cousins in the forgotten sea than the rest of the humanity, you can be sure they will not give up their knowledge easily. Arcurian Ridge: the Faye The mountainous terrain of Arcuria was once the sole dominion of the Faye. Their powers of flight and love for the cold made it a fitting environment. At one point, their city-states and kingdoms reached into the lowlands and they flirted with joining the human trade network. But then there was the war with the elves. A war so terrible and long that they remember almost nothing before it. The inferno that ended it all, clearing the way for the Celthestan settlers, was a mercy by comparison. The impacts of the war last to this day. The fairies retreated deeper into the mountains and isolated themselves from other races. They concentrated instead on building their strange, beautiful, vertical cities. In Myra, they appear as great glass orbs balanced on long delicate stems, almost invisible between snowy peaks. Each orb seem to host hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Faye, shooting up stairless passages and tending their pale, floating gardens. These cities, kingdoms in truth, are isolated from each other as well—and this is by law. They must not even interact, lest a feud form and spark into a war. For their intense isolationism, humans should know nothing about the Faye except through stories, but we know a bit more than that. The Kingdom of Myra, closest in distance and culture to humanity via Celtheste’s northern border, maintains a small human-accessible village at the base of their mountains where wanderers may come to satiate their curiosities, or even settle down as fairy acolytes. Practically everything we know about the Faye has been learned here in this curious town, with its stalagmitic palace and delicate, colorful main street facades; a mimicry of the human world that outshines its inspiration. It is perhaps a precaution; an embassy where the Faye might make themselves familiar to us, both to assure us of their peaceful intentions and to demonstrate their immense power. Yes, they are more than peace loving, but they also possess strong magic and technology so advanced as to be incomprehensible. They would not risk war, but more than that, they would not risk defeat. The fairies in the village are not withholding, but they are not without agenda, and they don’t seem to know very much themselves. Their histories all end in one blaring lesson: the war destroyed everything. Destroyed and corrupted. Myrans tell us they still skirmish with the Fenblu, undead fairies whose souls were apparently peeled off of them like skin. Even their maps are marked only with names of other kingdoms to avoid at all costs, written in their own spiraling script. We must rely on our own archaic human names to describe the four great fairy realms: Printhas, Farathon, Yarrowlinger, and Fengalia—where Myra rests. What are these realms? Ancient boundaries? Geographical regions? We are told only that the Faye are not one people, but two: the Fira, with whom we are familiar, and the Fayne, who are a much older, fearsome race, “carved out of the very cliffs and snow.” Three realms belong to the Fira, we are told, but all pay deference to Yarrowlinger—the realm reserved for the Fayne. Eleftherna: the Elves For ages the Elves were thought to be extinct and their land to be cursed and haunted, but past burning fields and fading enchantments, it seems the Elves are alive and well, if not quiet and grim. Since their war with the Faye ended in fire and destruction, they have spent the last millennia and a half believing they were the only remaining civilization on earth. They developed an economy of scarcity, divided into agrarian, mining, or manufacturing estates. These estates are ruled by noble families, the only true persons in Elven society. All others are considered chattel and can only hope to be adopted into the upper class. There is a heavy responsibility placed on the nobility, though. They must do battle with other families to protect the interests of their estate—but never openly. They send their sons and daughters in the night, to play deadly games in the dark. In the morning, the blood is wiped clean, the bodies discarded, and the fallen never spoken of again. If all of this sounds familiar it is because there are some societies of the Kira that have behaved similarly in times of hardship. And if one meets an elf, it is clear to see that elves are not their own race, as we once thought, but a subset of the Kira people: the tall, slender forms, the bronze or copper skin, the pointed ears—it is a wonder we did not see it in the Faye descriptions of their foes, albeit exaggerated and villainized. Or these basic forms encased in Celthestan cliff-sides, though warped and shriveled in the heat that ended them. We even call them demons, and their former lands Demonia, not knowing who or what they were. Now it is their turn to wonder at us. Fifteen-hundred years have gone by since the Faye War, and to just now find that they are not the last people on earth? What a disruption they face! How much they have to learn, to reconsider.